Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday May 21, 2013 @05:12PM
from the enjoy-a-tasty-extrudel dept.

cervesaebraciator writes
"According to Quartz, '[Anjan Contractor's] Systems & Materials Research Corporation just got a six month, $125,000 grant from NASA to create a prototype of his universal food synthesizer. But Contractor, a mechanical engineer with a background in 3-D printing, envisions a much more mundane — and ultimately more important — use for the technology. He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3-D printer, and the earth's 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store. Contractor's vision would mean the end of food waste, because the powder his system will use is shelf-stable for up to 30 years, so that each cartridge, whether it contains sugars, complex carbohydrates, protein or some other basic building block, would be fully exhausted before being returned to the store.' No word yet on whether anyone other than the guy trying to sell the technology thinks it'll make palatable food."

Exactly. With this new 3d printing technology people will now want to MAKE FOOD AT HOME! My god! We need to make it so its strictly regulated and people can only get food from government approved sites.

I already have something like this. I input basic food components (including powders and oil, as needed) in a ordered fashion (sometimes layer by layer), and after a short time, I extract a customized, nutritionally-appropriate meal.

No, its the pastel glop served at the restaurant during the restaurant in the 1985 Terry Gilliam film _Brazil_.

Will the cartridge's "glop" of powder and oils in its raw state have any digestible nutritional value? If not, until electrical power becomes ubiquitous and its corresponding failures guaranteed to be a thing of the distant past (it wasn't in Gilliam's Brazil) and one doesn't have access to a backup generator with a full tank, then it would be a good idea to keep some "real" food around, if it's still around. If it isn't, watching the neighbors might be necessary priority, especially if one doesn't have any "pets" to offer.